This invention relates generally to encryption and decryption of information, such as multimedia information, accomplished via a key, and more particularly to such encryption and decryption accomplished via a key that is user known and personally valuable, such as a credit card number.
The Internet has become a popular manner by which to purchase multimedia information such as music, a phenomenon that seemingly will only increase over time as more consumers have the ability to connect to the Internet, and as their connections are at greater bandwidths to permit other multimedia information, such as video, to also be easily purchased. While actors, artists and companies responsible for producing and distributing such multimedia information generally applaud new manners of distribution, they are nevertheless somewhat concerned about the Internet and other manners by which digital versions of their content can be distributed. This is because a copy of a digital version of content can easily be duplicated illegally by consumers, potentially decreasing the revenue taken in by the rightful owners of the content.
One solution that has been suggested and used within the prior art is the encryption of multimedia information via known encryption schemes. Usually, and especially in the context of multimedia information purchased by end consumers, the information is encrypted with a key. Knowledge of the key, therefore, is required to decrypt the information; without the key, the encrypted information is unintelligible. Thus, even if many digital copies of a particular song or movie were distributed over the Internet to end users all over the world, unless a given end user knows the key to unlock the encrypted copy, the song or movie is useless.
A barrier to the overall effectiveness of this approach is, however, that little deters a consumer who has purchased encrypted multimedia information from sharing the key provided to him or her with others, or even from posting the key on the Internet along with the encrypted information. While content owners can assign each purchaser of content with a unique key, such that illegal distribution of the key can be traced back to the original purchaser, this puts the onus of enforcement on the owners themselves, which will likely be time-consuming and expensive. Furthermore, the owners are put in the uncomfortable position of bringing action against their own customers, which may lead to public relations and other problems where it turns out that the key assigned to a particular consumer was distributed on a large scale through no fault of the consumerxe2x80x94for example, where the key was stolen from the consumer.
For these and other reasons, then, there is a need for the present invention.
The invention provides for using a user-known and personally valuable key, such as a credit card number, for encryption and decryption of information such as multimedia information. In one embodiment, a computer-implemented method involves transmitting a request for information from a client to a server over a network, such as the Internet. The information is encrypted with a key that is known to a user of the client and that is personally valuable to the user, to inhibit the user from sharing the key with others. The encrypted information is transmitted from the server to the client over the network. In one particular embodiment, the information is multimedia information, such as audio, music, video and/or image information, and the key is a credit card number of the user. The invention is not limited to information that is multimedia information, however; other types of information include text information, software programs (for the electronic distribution thereof), etc.
Embodiments of the invention provides for advantages not found within the prior art. A user has significant motivation not to share with others the key to decrypting encrypted information, where the key is known to the user and personally valuable to him or her, such as a credit card number, a driver""s license number, or a social security number. Thus, embodiments of the invention change illegal key distribution from being a matter in which the onus of enforcement is placed on the content owner, to a matter in which the onus of prevention is placed on the content user. Regardless of whether a user may fear legal repercussions from the seller of the encrypted information, he or she is very likely to worry about the damage that may result personally should the user share the key with others.
The invention includes computer-implemented methods, machine-readable media, computerized systems, and computers of varying scopes. Other aspects, embodiments and advantages of the invention, beyond those described here, will become apparent by reading the detailed description and with reference to the drawings.